TD13 - Uranium Dump - Nkana - Zambian Copperbelt (sitios de interés)
Descripción del sitio
Nkana Tailings Dam 13
July 29, 2009
Abandoned Kitwe uranium mill tailings to be relocated for safe disposal (at TD15)
The Copperbelt Environment Project (CEP) is to spend over $1.3 million to dispose 40,000 metric tonnes of uranium tailings dumped at TD 11 and TD 13 in Kitwe's Mindolo Mine Township.
CEP Communications Speciality Mumbuna Kufekisa told ZANIS in an interview in Kitwe today that CEP, in conjuction with ZCCM-Investment Holdings , has decided to dispose of the uranium tailings dumped at TD 11 and TD 13 from mining activities in the 1960s as they were a health and environmental hazard. Mr Kufekisa said the uranium would be taken for storage where they would be buried in a disposal cell and covered with laterite and vegetation at a Mopani Copper Mine dump site. He disclosed that the exercise, which was being undertaken by Copperfield Mining, would be done over a period of four months and at a cost of $1.3 million (Lusaka Times July 29, 2009)
ZCCM-IH Plc has engaged German consultancy WISUTEC Wismut Umwelttechnik GmbH to undertake an environmental and social impact study at two uranium dumps in the Kitwe area. The dumps are in an area where ZCCM-IH already has a programme in place of resettling residents to a safer area. So far, 600 people who were living near the uranium dumps have been resettled elsewhere.
ZCCM-IH environmental officer Cyril Lukeke told media practitioners who visited the company's projects under the World Bank-supported Copperbelt Environment Project (CEP) that study would cost about 500,000 euros. Lukeke said the consultant has already collected samples from the two dump sites to ascertain the effects of the uranium residue on the community living nearby. The study started in April and is billed for completion next year, after which ZCCM-IH will determine the remedial measures to be taken.
Uranium was mined at Kitwe, where the mine is now operated by Mopani Copper Mines (MCM) Plc, during the 1950s when a company called Amco was contracted to sink shafts at Mindola. The uranium was shipped to the United Kingdom, whose colony northern Rhodesia was then, but since then, the mineral has not been actively mined. (Mineweb June 11, 2007)
"The only uranium production [in Zambia] was done in the early 1950's at the Nkana copper mine, Kitwe, in the copperbelt. From about 100,000 tonnes of uranium ore mined at a grade of 0.19 per cent U, about 100 tonnes U were produced." (NEA/IAEA: Uranium Resources, Production and Demand, 1989)